Trail of Blood

“You don’t know. So why are you bringing it up?”

“Someone may have thought it was.”

“And the co

“I don’t know.”

“Did Pilarsky have it? Or know where it was?”

“I don’t know.”

A pause. “All right, I’ll check it out.”

Hah. I could just bet what that meant. Mulgrew barking across the squad room: Hey, any of you ever heard of some jewel called the Shanghai Moon? What about this mutt Wong Pan, from China, where they stole all our jobs?

Alice walked to the door and opened it for him. “Thank you for being willing to come to the hotel, Detective.”

“My pleasure, ma’am. Not often I get to see how the other half lives.”

When we were alone again, I said, “Well, you won his heart.”

“He’s not so bad.”

“Yes, he is.”

“Just overworked, I think. Most policemen are overworked. Not that you seem exactly fresh as a daisy, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

“I’m exhausted.”

“You’ve had a terrible day. Why don’t you go home? Take a long hot bath. Something relaxing, maybe lavender. It’ll do you a world of good.”

“You know, that sounds great.” I stood. “We can talk in the morning.”

“Yes, but I think not professionally.”

“What do you mean?”

“Until they catch whoever killed Joel, or until we can be sure his death had nothing to do with Rosalie Gilder’s jewelry, I can’t think of letting you go on.”

My jaw dropped. “You can’t think of stopping me! Joel would hate that, giving up!”

“I’m not talking about giving up, but until we know it’s safe, we have to let the police take over. I’ll call my clients. I’m sure they’ll agree.”

“But that’s just wrong! Mulgrew’s not really looking for Wong Pan, and he didn’t care at all about the Shanghai Moon!”

“He may be right.”

“He’s not right.”

“All the more reason to back off, then, and let his investigation lead him to that conclusion. Really, Lydia, I can’t allow to you endanger yourself. Recovering this jewelry isn’t worth that. I’m sorry, but it’s my decision.”

“But to just give up-”

“Oh, Lydia, please don’t make me say it.”

“Say what?”

Her sympathetic look didn’t alter her unambiguous words. “You’re fired.”

10

I called Bill the the second I disembarked from the Waldorf. “We’re fired!”

“What you mean ‘we,’ Chinese woman?”

“Be serious! This is bad!” I told him about the interview with Mulgrew, and its aftermath.

He asked, “What are you going to do?”

“Are you kidding? If you think there’s any possible way I’m going to forget it and let Mulgrew just go through the motions, you’re every bit as-”

“I didn’t say, ‘Are you going to forget it?’ ” he broke in. “I said, ‘What are you going to do?’ ”

“Oh. Well, when you put it that way.” I rubbed my eyes. “I apologize. I shouldn’t be taking it out on you.”

“That’s what I’m here for. Though I’d be curious to know what I’m every bit as.”

“I’ll never tell. But I’m curious to know something, too. Why did you do that thing you do, sitting off to the side so you can observe someone?”

“I do that?”

“You know, when I play i

For a moment he was silent. “There’s something peculiar about her. Joel said so, too.”

“ ‘Off’ is the word he used, and that was because she does this work and she’s not Jewish.”

“And she explained that. But there’s still something.”

“Any idea what?”

“No.”

“Have you eaten yet?” my mother called from the living room as I slipped off my shoes in the vestibule. It’s a standard Chinese greeting, the hospitable inquiry of a famine-prone land. It’s no more looking for a real answer than “How are you?” is in English. But the thought of food right now was enough to curdle my stomach.

“I’m not hungry. Ma, I need to tell you something.” I sat on the couch next to her.

“Ling Wan-ju? What’s wrong?” She shut her Hong Kong fashion magazine, which she studies for ideas for outfits for my sisters-in-law and me.

“It’s Joel, Ma.”

“The one who sings.”

“Ma, he’s dead.”

Her lips compressed into a thin line. She patted my hand. Then, hands back in her own lap, she asked, “What happened to him?”

“Someone shot him.”

“Who did that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Was it because of your case?”

Nothing like the head-on approach.

“I don’t know that either. The police don’t think so.” She nodded and minutely relaxed. I could have left it at that, but I didn’t want to lie to her. “I do, though.”

“Do you?”

“Yes. The client does, too. She wants me to stop.”

A few moments of silence. “Are you in danger, Ling Wan-ju?”

“I don’t know.”

“But it wouldn’t matter, would it?”

“Ma-”

“No, it would not. And what the client wants will not matter either. You will do what you think is the right thing for your friend, even if you must do it all alone.”

I wasn’t going to be alone, but this would have been a particularly bad time to bring up Bill.

“No, you will continue. You will not consider the consequences until they happen.”

“I have no choice, Ma.”

She looked across the room to the cabinet holding my father’s collection of mud figurines: fishermen, farmers, a young woman weaving. People living the lives their parents had lived, and their parents’ parents, unchanging, peaceful, and unsurprising. She stood. “You have a choice, Ling Wan-ju: whether to eat di

Pig’s heart soup, for reviving the fainthearted. As I followed my mother into the kitchen, I wondered, how had she known?

My mother and I watched a Cantonese soap opera while we ate, a costume drama full of drums and cymbals, Tang dynasty outfits, and complicated hairdos. Trying to follow the story absorbed my attention, as had the ru

I stood in the middle of the floor, feeling my breath knocked out the same way it had been by the actual sight. I closed my eyes, didn’t try to muscle the picture away, but let it rush in like a tide until, like a tide, it could ebb again.

It did. But tired as I was, there was no way, after that, I was going to be able to sleep.

So I turned my computer on and Googled “Shanghai Moon.”

I didn’t learn much more than I had from Mr. Friedman’s book. No Web site had photos, or even a good description. All agreed the Shanghai Moon’s whereabouts were unknown; few agreed on its last known location. In a chat room I found a breathless account of a brooch seen at an audience with some Bhutanese royals; could this be the Shanghai Moon? Two curt responses: no, and no way. The jade described was apple green. The setting included sapphires. The poster, someone scoffed, must be a newbie even to ask. On another site someone calling himself MoonHunter reported on a private jewelry auction at a swank hotel in Kuala Lumpur, which he’d been invited to by a collector friend. He dwelled a little long, I thought, on the VIP status of the attendees, the lapis fountain, the free Moët, and the stu

After an hour of surfing, I got tired of rehashes of the same rumors. Also, the aroma of greed, the focus on the guessed-at value of the brooch, began to bother me. Where was Rosalie in all this, these discussions of colors of jade? Where was Chen Kai-rong, where was the reason the Shanghai Moon had come into existence in the first place?